Thinking of Buying a Towcar?

Thinking of buying a towcar? Your easy guide towards choosing a towcar G Outfit matching G Choosing a towbar G Which body style to choose G Which engine to go for G What to avoid Choosing and buying a towcar If you’re thinking of buying a towcar there’ll Considering buying a towcar is quite a big step, with a be loads of questions you’d like answered. commitment to invest a fair amount of money. Well, we at The Caravan Club want to help you, And, if you’ve no experience of towcars, things like so we’ve compiled some of the basics such as “What type of towcar should I buy?” and “How much will what to look for ...and what to avoid. it be able to tow?” may seem like almost unanswerable questions. This leaflet probably won’t tell you absolutely everything you’ve ever wanted to know about towcars, but we are sure it will point you in the right direction. You can also find more detailed help on The Caravan Club website www.caravanclub.co.uk. So, let’s get you started on your first step to towcar purchase and an enjoyable future of trouble-free touring... CONTENTS Choosing the right towcar Glossary Choosing the right towcar will go a long way to Making sense of the terminology – page 14. ensuring that your towing experience is enjoyable and relaxed – as well as safe and legal of course. Noseweight Limits We’ll steer you through the various options on pages 3 and 4. A useful table full of the most popular makes and models and their noseweights – pages 15-18. Matching your towcar to your caravan Outfit weight ratio, power to weight ratio, torque and gearing – All the variables that should be taken into account for matching your towcar can be found in pages 5-9. Go Green…go caravanning Touring is a wonderful way to get close to nature and is one of the greenest options for a holiday. Take a look at pages 10-12 for more information on how to maximize your economy and decrease environmental damage. Useful Conversions A collection of guides and tables to help you achieve the best performance from your towcar and caravan – page 13. 2 Choosing the right towcar Choosing a towcar couldn’t be easier In today’s busy world anything that saves time is a real boon. We’ve put all the essential info you’ll need in the first few pages of this leaflet. If you want to delve more deeply into the technical world of weights and power ratios you’ll find more detailed help on pages 6 to 10. Caravanning is a lot of fun, and part of the fun should be the journey, not just the destination. Choosing the right towcar will go a long way to ensuring that your towing experience is enjoyable and relaxed, as well as being safe and legal, of course. The most important things to remember when choosing your towcar are to: match the weight of your towcar to your caravan carefully (outfit weight ratio). And, get a towcar with sufficient pulling power to tow a caravan Towcar of the year (power to weight ratio). At The Caravan Club we’ve done all the hard work for If we all had unlimited funds (and little regard for the you. The Towcar of the Year Awards were created to environment) the solution would be simple, just buy the enable you to make informed decisions when choosing heaviest most powerful car and both problems are a towcar and to keep you up to date with the latest solved instantly. However, in reality most of us need an innovations and trends in car design. economical, moderately sized car for daily use that can The awards also encourage relationships between car also be used as a towcar for touring. Hopefully once manufacturers and The Club to benefit everyone. The you’ve read this leaflet you’ll be on your way to finding 2009 awards saw 19 manufacturers enter 38 vehicles the perfect balance to fit both bills. into the awards – all of which were tested rigorously by our team. To find out the most recent winners just visit The Caravan Club website. You’ll find all of our past winners there too, which you might find useful if you are considering buying a second-hand towcar. The Škoda Superb 2.0 TDI won the 2009 Towcar of the Year Awards. Go to caravanclub.co.uk/practical for courses and DVDs 3 Outfit matching If technical and mathematical calculations are not your thing The Caravan Club will do all the work for you. Outfit Matching is the term used to describe whether a particular car and caravan are suitable for use together. We use a computer database of car and caravan technical details, plus extensive archives of manufacturers’ information and test reports, to provide detailed information very quickly. Just give us a call on: 01342 326 944. All you’ll need to know is your: Car:- Make Model So I don’t need to know anything else? Body Style Derivative/Trimstyle Well they do say knowledge is power, and with caravans Engine size and type and towcars, power is essential. Great as the outfit Year or registration number matching service is, we can’t know everything about the weight of your caravan and car; particularly when fully Caravan:- laden with people, pets, food, the half dozen surfboards Make you’re taking, or the number of golf clubs or fishing rods Range you’ll need. With this in mind it’s worth understanding Model some technical terms and some simple rules of thumb in No. of berths relation to choosing the right towcar for you. We’ve put Year of manufacture together a few of the most important. Go to caravanclub.co.uk/outfit-match for a free outfit matching service 4 Matching your towcar to your caravan Outfit weight ratio What is torque? The ideal is to have the heaviest practical towcar for Torque is the turning power generated by an engine. your caravan. The heavier the car, the less likely you are Good torque at low engine speeds will allow easy pulling to experience a swaying or snaking caravan. Try and aim away, and towing with a minimum of gear changing. for an ALW (total weight of your caravan including what Manufacturers generally only quote maximum torque you add) of no more than 85% of the car’s kerb weight and the speed at which it is produced. However many and it’s very unwise to exceed 100%. When you have engines nowadays produce 90%+ of maximum torque established your caravan’s ALW, multiply it by 1.2 as a from 2500 to 4000 rpm, so a quoted maximum at 4500- guide to the kerb weight of the car to aim for. 5000 rpm need not necessarily be bad for towing. Even a high-speed maximum torque can be sufficient if first It’s worth noting that if you get The Caravan Club to do gear is low enough to pull away, subsequently the gear- an outfit match assessment for you, they’ll usually base change in this case will be light, so frequent changes it on a ‘worst case scenario’ of the car’s kerb weight (i.e. aren’t a strain. Alternatively, you can choose an the lightest the car can be) and the caravan’s MTPLM automatic gearbox, where the torque converter usually (i.e. the heaviest the caravan can be). As we don’t know solves the problem. exactly what you will be loading into your caravan and car, it’s worth getting to know your Actual Laden Weight Petrol, diesel or turbo? so you can better understand your towcar options. It does seem that diesel engines are definitely the way Power to weight ratio forward in touring especially if you think you’ll be touring a great deal. Most of the recent Towcar of the Power to weight ratio is usually measured in brake Year winners (and class winners) have been diesels, and horsepower per tonne (bhp/tonne). Many caravanners 70% of Club members choose a diesel car. take great pride in working out the best possible balance between all the weight and power ratios and will go to great lengths to make sure every variable has been accounted for. Whilst this can be very satisfying, when you are just starting out in touring it can all be a bit overwhelming. The simplest rule of thumb to remember is to aim for 40 bhp/tonne of the train weight, i.e. everything in the outfit that the engine has to pull – laden car and laden caravan. This is a minimum target figure for allowing reasonable performance, not delaying other traffic and having sufficient power for overtaking. Of course the more powerful your car the easier and safer it will be. There are other factors that you can take into consideration such as gearing, torque characteristics and Modern diesels are lively and refined, yet retain their aerodynamics, to name but a few, and if you feel you’d inherent characteristics of good fuel economy and good like to fully explore all the variables please read on. torque delivery. The issue of ‘turbo or not turbo’ has become easier to solve in recent years too. Almost all cars with engine capacities under 2.5l tend to be turbocharged just like the larger engine diesel models. Diesels tend to have a longer life and hold their value better than petrol powered vehicles.

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